Munich Personal RePEc Archive Printing and protestants: an empirical test of the role of printing in the Reformation Rubin, Jared Chapman University 3 June 2011 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/34294/ MPRA Paper No. 34294, posted 13 Jun 2012 00:41 UTC Printing and Protestants: An Empirical Test of the Role of Printing in the Reformation* Jared Rubin† Chapman University May 2012 Abstract The causes of the Protestant Reformation have long been debated. This paper attempts to revive and econometrically test the theory that the spread of the Reformation is linked to the spread of the printing press. I test this theory by analyzing data on the spread of the press and the Reformation at the city level. An econometric analysis which instruments for omitted variable bias with a city’s distance from Mainz, the birthplace of printing, suggests that cities with at least one printing press by 1500 were 52.1 percentage points more likely to be Protestant by 1530. This economically and statistically significant effect lasted through 1600, though it weakened throughout the century. Keywords: Printing Press, Protestant Reformation, Information Technology, Revolt JEL Classifications: N33, N73, O33, Z12 * I am grateful for extensive and excellent comments provided by Ran Abramitzky, Davide Cantoni and Jeremiah Dittmar. I am also indebted to Sascha Becker, Latika Chaudhary, Avner Greif, Gordon Hanson, Petra Moser, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and conversations as well as to seminar participants at Stanford, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, Chapman, the 2011 ASSA Meetings, 2011 ASREC Meetings, 2011 EHA Meetings, and 2012 Osaka Workshop on Economics of Institutions and Organizations. I am also very thankful for econometric advice provided by Andy Gill and Jonathan Meer. All errors are mine. † E-mail: [email protected]; Address: Department of Economics, Chapman University, One University Drive, Orange, CA 92866. 1. Introduction The century between 1450 and 1550 is one of incredible importance in European economic history. A far from exhaustive list of important events in this period include the “finding” of the New World, the invention of the printing press, the Ottoman conquering of Constantinople and threatening of Vienna, the height of the Renaissance, and the Protestant Reformation. Many economists have pointed to at least one of these phenomena as heralding the “rise of the West” (Weber 1905; Tawney 1926; Pomeranz 2000; Mokyr 1990, 2002; Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2001, 2005; Greif 2006; Becker and Wößmann 2008, 2009; Iyigun 2008; Buringh and van Zanden 2009; Chilosi and Volckart 2010; Dittmar 2011). The problem for the economic historian is disentangling these events. Which events were facilitated by other historical events, and, more importantly, which events were the true “prime movers” of this momentous period of economic history? In this paper, I focus on the relationship between the spread of printing press and the Protestant Reformation. Economists have recently touted both of these events as having monumental long-run economic effects. Baten and Van Zanden (2008), Buringh and Van Zanden (2009), Chilosi and Volckart (2010), and Dittmar (2011) are recent additions to the literature stressing the importance of the printing press as an independent factor contributing to subsequent European economic growth.1 Becker and Wößmann (2008, 2009, 2010), in the tradition of Max Weber (1905), connect the spread of Protestantism to subsequent economic growth – though unlike Weber, they emphasize the Reformers’ stress on literacy as the causal factor.2 If these two events are related, then the true impact on subsequent economic growth of either (or both) may be overstated.3 1 Classic studies providing a similar linkage include Febvre and Martin (1958) and Eisenstein (1979). 2 In a related work, Buringh and van Zanden (2009) show that conversion to Protestantism is strongly related to subsequent literacy outcomes. Other recent works connecting religion to human capital accumulation include Berman (2000), Botticini and Eckstein (2005, 2007), and Chaudhary and Rubin (2011). Blum and Dudley (2001) 1 This paper is far from the first to connect the printing press to the Reformation.4 This argument is centuries old, with arguments in support of (Dickens 1968; Eisenstein 1979; Edwards 1994; Gilmont 1998) and against (Febvre and Martin 1958; Scribner 1989) the causal linkage connecting the press and the Reformation. For example, in their classic book The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing – which extols the positive historical significance of the printing press – Febvre and Martin (1958, p. 288) claim that “it is not part of our intention to revive the ridiculous thesis that the Reformation was the child of the printing press”. But is this thesis so ridiculous? A key problem with past theses connecting the printing press to the Reformation is that the linkage may be spurious. Even if we accept that the press facilitated the Reformers’ ability to spread the seeds of dissent, it is certainly possible that cities which were more likely to accept the Reformation were also more likely to adopt printing for reasons correlated with both the press and Protestantism, such as higher pre-printing press literacy rates, larger population, or local independence from centralized rule.5 If this were the case, then the Reformation may have been accepted in these cities even if the press were never invented. present a pro-Weber argument, but suggest that Protestant economic networks, not a “work ethic” are the root cause. Arruñada (2010) argues that Protestants did not have a unique work ethic, but instead had a “social ethic” which favored market transactions. Barro and McCleary (2003) and Grier (1997) tackle a similar question, analyzing the connection between Protestantism (amongst other religions) to economic outcomes using cross-country studies. Likewise, Guiso et al. (2003) find a positive correlation between Christian religions and attitudes conducive towards economic growth. 3 Cantoni (2010) employs a similar methodology to Becker and Wößmann on a broader set of German lands and finds little evidence of the effect of Protestantism on human capital accumulation. However, Becker and Wößmann’s data includes rural areas (using complete census data), unlike Cantoni. Indeed, Becker and Wößmann do not find a clear connection between Protestantism and development when looking only at cities. 4 Cantoni (2012) asks a similar question to the one posed in this paper. He finds that, amongst other things, there was a strong spatial pattern to the spread of Protestantism. This result is consistent with the one found in this paper. I also show that there was a spatial component to the spread of the Reformation independent of the effect of the press. Cantoni’s work and the present paper also relate to Barro and McCleary’s (2005) work seeking the determinants of state religion. These papers suggest historical roots underlying Barro and McCleary’s findings in the case of European Protestantism, although Barro and McCleary are not concerned with denominational differences. 5 Putnam (1993), Guiso, Sapienza, and Zingales (2008), and Jacob (2010) contend that the independence of certain cities in Northern Italy and the Holy Roman Empire led to greater social capital and hence better subsequent economic outcomes. 2 It is nearly impossible to disentangle these events without careful data collection and analysis. To this end, this paper contributes a much needed empirical analysis to the debate on the link between the printing press and the Reformation. It employs a new city-level data set (covering Central and Western Europe) on conversion to Protestantism, the presence of a printing press by 1500, and a host of variables controlling for the supply and demand of Protestantism. To address omitted variable biases – such as pre-printing literacy rates correlating with the acceptance of both the press and Reformation – I instrument for the printing press with a city’s distance to Mainz, the birthplace of printing. This instrument is also used by Dittmar (2011), and is similar to the “distance from Wittenberg” instrument employed by Becker and Wößmann (2008, 2009, 2010) and Cantoni (2010). It is a useful instrument because printing spread in a relatively concentric circular pattern outward from Mainz; yet a city’s distance from Mainz should have no direct effect on the adoption of the Reformation. I find a very strong connection between towns which adopted the printing press and those that accepted the Reformation; instrumental variable results indicate that towns with a press by 1500 were 52.1 percentage points more likely to accept the Reformation by 1530, 43.6 percentage points more likely to accept the Reformation by 1560, and 28.7 percentage points more likely to accept the Reformation by 1600. The weakening effect of the press over the 16th century suggests that cities which were early adopters of printing were more likely to adopt the Reformation as it initially spread, but other factors (e.g., politics, the greater penetration of printing throughout the 16th century) played a more important role in the persistence of the Reformation. The implications of these results are immense for the growing body of literature on religion, economic growth, and printing. Most importantly, if Dittmar (2011) is correct and the press had an independent effect on economic development, then Weber’s (and Becker and 3 Wößmann’s) linkage between Protestantism and economic